The Paul Bentley Collection

Paul Bentley

When I was at school a friend was going to the ANZAC day dawn service with his father (who was Second World War Veteran) and invited me to come along, so I did. I was fascinated by the medals the veterans were wearing and wondered what they were for. My friend’s father explained to me the Pacific Star and the Africa Star, and obtaining a medal chart I was soon able to identify the Great War and Second World War medals. Not long after that I went to visit an old family friend who lived near my grandmother. Mr George Hobson was always like a grandfather to me and I loved talking to the old boy. His son Jack was a school friend of my father, and after my grandfather had been killed in an accident when my father was 12, George became a father figure to my dad.

I knew that George had served in the Boer War, for he had showed me the two bullet holes in his arm and where the middle finger was shot off his right hand. In 1915 George tried to join up again and was told that because of his missing finger he might not be able to handle a rifle properly! Well George came off a farm and had been a keen hunter all his life and, disgusted with the attitude of the Australian Army, he entered himself in the national rifle shooting contest in 1915 and won it! ‘That showed the blighters’, he said, ‘but they still wouldn’t let me join.’

With my new found interest in medals I said to George, ‘Did they give medals for the Boer War?’
‘Yes’, came the reply.
‘Did you get some, and could I see them?’
‘Yes, come with me son’, and he led me into the back garden and into the hen house where he reached under the straw in the nest and produced an old tobacco tin with his medals.
‘Why do you keep them there?’, I said
‘Well’, said George, ‘there have been a few robberies around here lately, and I don’t think they will find them there’. Out of the tin came a five clasp Queen’s South Africa Medal, and a medal I had never seen before. It had a reddish riband with a central blue strip, with the head of King Edward VII on the obverse, and on the reverse was written ‘For Distinguished Conduct in the Field’. Many years later I had a friend serving at Army H.Q. in Canberra and he looked up the citation for me, and said ‘It was a V.C. citation you know.’
History records that Private Hobson was Mentioned in Lord Kitchener's Despatches; was promoted Corporal; and was awarded the D.C.M. (there were only 7 Distinguished Conduct Medals awarded to troopers from New South Wales). The citation said that ‘nineteen year old Trooper Hobson, though surrounded by the enemy, with his companions dead or wounded and wounded seven times himself, refused to surrender and kept up such a hot and accurate fire, killing and wounding several, that the Boers withdrew and left him alone.’

Another tale I must relate about George. I had just been to see the movie ‘Khartoum’, about the ill-fated attempts to rescue General Gordon, and I called in to visit George on my way home and was telling him about the movie. He then told me that one of his earliest memories was when his father took him into Sydney and they stood outside the town hall and watched the Sudan contingent march off. When I told him I was amazed to meet some one who could remember that he said ‘I liked talking to my great uncle: he sat on the hill at Balaclava and watched the Charge of the Light Brigade.’

A little while after seeing George’s medals I happened into an antiques shop on my way home from school, and there in a case was a five clasp Queen’s South Africa Medal, with the same clasps that George had (Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, and South Africa 1902). It was such a beautiful medal, so well made and much better that the Second World War bronze stars, that I had to have it. But it was £2/10/-. Now I got £1 per week and out of that I had to pay my bus fares and my school lunches, and one shilling and threepence for a packet of fags, which left me just 5 shillings a week. I scratched around in my pockets and found four shillings, and borrowed a shilling from a friend and put 5/- down on it on lay-by, and paid it off at five shillings a week. And that was my first medal.

A little later I acquired Taprell Dorling’s book ‘Ribbons and Medals’ and determined that I would try and acquire one of each of the Victorian campaign medals. I was captivated by the beauty of the design and quality of manufacture and the story behind the medals. Years later meeting other collectors I was wised up about collecting and started to buy groups with an interesting story to them.

When I arrived at university I at once enlisted in the University regiment and there in the Q store was an old Staff Sergeant who was wearing the Africa Star. I got to know Ken and he was a veteran of El Alamein. Talking to him one night I asked if his battalion had many casualties.
‘Yes’, he said, ‘but the largest number of hospital cases was for circumcision. In the desert in a sandstorm the sand and fine dust gets right through your clothing and in some blokes under the foreskin- they got rubbed raw and sometimes they got infected so they had to go to hospital and be nipped.’ These are the stories you hear from the old soldiers, that you do not get in the history books.

The medals too told some good stories. I once acquired a Ghuznee Medal to a Lancer and his record showed that he had been sentenced to 100 lashes for wounding his horse while drunk. When I showed this to a British cavalry officer I was serving with he said ‘well in the cavalry you can beat your wife but you can not mistreat your horse’. Another interesting one was an India General Service Medal 1854-95 to a Private of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, whose record showed he had served 21 years including 19 years in India. The medical officers report recommending his discharge stated he was suffering from ‘Syphilis and cirrhosis of the liver due to chronic intemperance, and is of no further use to Her Majesty’s service’. He obviously enjoyed his time in India.

It has been a most enjoyable and rewarding hobby. It breaks my heart to sell the collection but I have no one to leave them to and I know that with other collectors they will be going to a good home and be appreciated.

Paul Bentley, Sydney, N.S.W., July 2023